In Long Island City, Now Arriving in No Man’s Land

On a recent Saturday night, more than a dozen people found themselves in the industrial wilds of Long Island City, Queens, looking for a line of yellow paint.

They had been invited by email, and when they arrived at the appointed intersection, at 11 p.m., they were instructed by text to follow the paint, as though in Oz, until the end. “The doorman awaits,” the text said. “Be discreet.”

It added: “Bring a sunflower if you see one.”

The yellow line was easy to miss if you weren’t looking. A mere dribble at points, it veered away from the art venues and coffee shops of Long Island City and into a dark warren of warehouses. It ran past delivery trucks and Dumpsters and, yes, an improbable patch of sunflowers. Then it stopped, at an overpass.

Or seemed to stop. At the overpass, it ran up a retaining wall. A man waved from above: the doorman. The guests clambered up, clinging to a chain-link fence, and at the top, they took in the view. Tall weeds swayed, growing high between the railroad tracks. The Manhattan skyline twinkled.

They had been summoned to an elevated rail line, no longer in use.

This was the latest work by N. D. Austin, a creator of the Night Heron, a speakeasy set inside a water tower atop a Chelsea building, in 2013, and the leader since then of countless expeditions into New York’s abandoned and neglected places.

Like all of Mr. Austin’s projects, this one, which ran for five nights in late November, was staged in a little-known corner of the city; it was ephemeral, and exclusive. But unlike the settings for those previous happenings, this corner had not been forgotten by its owner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This fall, the authority asked the public for “reuse concepts” for the stretch of elevated rail line, known as the Montauk Cutoff.

Mr. Austin’s stunt was unrelated to the call. He had heard about the spot from a friend and picked it for his year-end get-together on the hunch that it might not be accessible for long. “It could be turned into anything,” he said.

That night, Mr. Austin played the doorman. He stood on the tracks and told guests to walk until they met a woman. They passed a few billboards, the silhouette of a concrete plant.

A woman stood at the bridge over a creek, Dutch Kills, at the end of the Montauk Cutoff. She asked guests to cross, carefully, and go down a staircase. At the bottom, in a reed bed on the banks of the creek, sat a shipping container.

They slipped inside, through a heavy curtain, into the glow of candlelight. The 20-foot-long container was outfitted with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a bar, a piano and a candelabra chandelier. A sign read “Jackpin II.” (The first “Jackpin” was held last year, in an elevator shaft in Midtown Manhattan.)

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The speakeasy, in a 20-foot-long shipping container, was outfitted with a vaulted ceiling, a bar, a piano and a candelabra chandelier.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

The bartender, Jesse Sheidlower, wore a trilby equipped with a headlamp. “By now,” he said of the event, “when you hear about one of these, you don’t ask, ‘Is it going to be a sex club, or a trivia night, or a speakeasy?’ You pretty much know it’s going to be a speakeasy.”

Guests were handed a Negroni-inspired cocktail, called a Montauk Cutoff, and asked to turn off their cellphones.

The Montauk Cutoff runs about a third of a mile through the industrial district of southern Long Island City, atop an embankment 16 feet above street level. Starting around 1910, the spur served to shuttle freight trains between the Long Island Rail Road’s Lower Montauk Branch and the Arch Street Yard.

It was decommissioned this year because a new freight yard was built that offered trains easier access, according to the transportation authority.

The last freight train rolled though in March.

The authority put out its call — technically, “a request for expressions of interest” — in October. Among possible “innovative adaptive reuse concepts,” it listed “public open space, urban farming, or museum or sculpture garden space.” Authority officials said it would also consider commercial uses.

The agency says its conditions are specific: The right project would finance itself, including funds for the access and safety features required to bring the line up to code. The authority would reserve the right to reclaim the space if needed.

Wishing to rein in any visions of a new High Line, officials pointed to the short reach of the cutoff, its proximity to a network of active rail lines and the highly industrial setting.

Nevertheless, the authority said several groups had shown interest and requested tours, including a community group called the Newtown Creek Alliance and the Smiling Hogshead Ranch, a nonprofit community farm at one end of the line.

The farm began as an unauthorized project on an adjacent decommissioned rail spur but now rents its half acre from the transportation authority. A co-founder, Gil Lopez, said the farm was serving as a model for the cutoff, turning what had been a dumping ground into a place with fruit trees and flower beds.

The farm is drawing up a plan for the elevated rail line. “It’s an opportunity,” Mr. Lopez said, “but also a challenge. If we don’t do something, it could be taken out from under us.”

A spokesman for the transportation authority, Aaron Donovan, said that after all submissions have been received in February, it will decide whether to put out a request for proposals. “We’re hoping that somebody with the wherewithal to manage the space will step in, to basically take care of it,” Mr. Donovan said, adding, “We’d like to make it useful to the public so it’s not sitting empty and prone to vandalism.”

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The Smiling Hogshead Ranch is a nonprofit community farm at one end of the Montauk Cutoff.CreditBenjamin Norman for The New York Times

When asked if he knew about the speakeasy in the shipping container, Mr. Donovan said no. “The man with the shipping container is welcome to throw his hat in the ring,” he said, “if he would like to return legally.”

During its brief existence, around 180 people visited Jackpin II, in groups of about 20.

On its final night, several of Mr. Austin’s collaborators on previous projects appeared; they were two set designers, an emergency room doctor, the musical group Amour Obscur and the bartender, Mr. Sheidlower, who by day is a lexicographer.

The guests that night also included an immersive experience designer, a magazine editor, a comedian, a yoga teacher, someone who had just quit a job in finance and a person who was starting a co-working space on a boat in Newtown Creek.

As they settled onto the sofas, some ventured comparisons. The room looked like a dining car, a room on the Titanic.

“It’s surprisingly warm,” one guest said.

“The candles,” another replied.

Mr. Austin first visited the container in early November with Charles Philipp, a media producer for technology companies. The two built it out over the course of a few weeks.

They furnished the bar with found materials; the piano came from a Dumpster. “One night we hoisted a piano up there and schlepped it down the tracks,” Mr. Austin said.

The site served as inspiration for the décor: Mr. Philipp arranged archival photos of the area’s rail lines on the walls and along a shelf, amid some railroad spikes.

Using similar methods, Mr. Austin and his longtime collaborator, Ida C. Benedetto, have staged events in abandoned resorts, hotels and factories, in vacant apartment buildings, tunnels and unused subway stations. They scour building violation records, consult maps and talk to fellow explorers. When they find a promising site, they act fast and work on the cheap, always at night.

They have been held up as proof that the underground scene is not dead in New York City, and that there is still a lot left to discover. So far, none of their found locations have been opened to the public.

Sometime after midnight, Mr. Austin climbed onto the piano with his guitar and sang a raspy “New York, New York.” Amour Obscur played their late-night abandoned-space classic, “Only the Whiskey,” about what you most often take home from a night on the town.

As people stomped and banged on the ceiling, flakes of paint sprinkled to the floor.

When the music died, Mr. Austin announced last call and explained to his guests that they would depart on the tracks that curved away from the elevated line. “Those are active lines, but not very often,” he said, and the group laughed. Someone began playing “Stand by Me.”

A few hours later, the shipping container had gone quiet. Everything was gone but the vaulted ceiling and the piano.

Correction:

The byline for an article last Sunday about the Montauk Cutoff, a railway passage in Long Island City, Queens, that is no longer in use, was omitted in some editions. The article was by Annie Correal.